completing his dissertation on H.P. Lovecraft.
“Episode Seven” is reinvention of a story Langan wrote in his early twenties. This current version was influenced by another story in this volume: “The End of the World As We Know It” by Dale Bailey. “Dale’s story is a great revision of the classic, mid-century post-apocalypse story,” Langan says. “I admired what he’d achieved, but I also felt a bit of rivalry, a desire to show that not everyone would roll over and go gently into that good night.”
“There’s a whole lot of hate left on this world, Spiderman.”
“Come On Down, Make the Stand.”
“He was not assaulted by a roving pack of feral dogs.”
AFTER three days and nights on the run—
—during which they slept in thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-minute snatches, in the backs of large cars and SUVs, in a hotel lobby, in a sporting goods store at one end of a mall—
—they managed to pull ahead of the Pack—
—who had been too close from the start and drawn closer than that, despite Wayne’s traps, all of which were clever and a few ingenious and the least of which thinned the Pack by two or three; until Wayne succeeded in luring them onto the walkway between the foodcourt and the mall’s front entrance, where he detonated something that not only dropped the floor out from beneath the Pack, but brought the roof down, too, raining shards of glass like so many economy-sized guillotines—Jackie had wanted to stay and finish the survivors, but Wayne had declared it was still too dangerous and hauled her out the door—
—cross the Bridge—
—too congested with cars for them to take the Jeep Cherokee Wayne had navigated up the surprisingly empty stretch of Route 9 between the mall and the Mid-Hudson Bridge, which had made them debate the pros and cons of continuing north along this side of the Hudson until they reached the next bridge, which might be clear or might not (for once, Wayne couldn’t make up his mind), until Jackie insisted they might as well cross here as cross anywhere: there would be plenty of cars on the other side, and if they didn’t do something, they were going to squander their lead and face the Pack on
—set up camp on the other shore—
—on a ledge overlooking the spot where the Bridge slotted into the steep hills on the western shore of the Hudson—Wayne had noticed the shelf of rock as they followed the road up and to the right, past another cluster of cars full of purple flowers, pointing it out to Jackie—when they reached a place where the ledge was accessible from the road, up a steep path blocked by a gate Wayne was certain he could open, he had steered them towards it (even though Jackie’s legs trembled at the prospect of more and harder climbing), urging her on, murmuring encouragements, praise, until they had gained the top of the path and Wayne had sprung the lock on the gate, let them through, and snapped the lock closed again behind them—Jackie had followed him as he picked his way across the rocks littering the shelf; no more than fifteen feet at its widest, she guesstimated; the Bridge returning to view, and then Wayne had held up his hand as if he were some kind of native guide signaling the rest of the safari and said that this would do—
—and were preparing an ambush—
—Wayne starting back along the ledge almost as soon as they’d shucked their backpacks, taking with him only the bulky black canvas bag that Jackie thought of sometimes as his bag of tricks and sometimes as his utility belt, and one of the pistols, leaving the other guns with her: the rifle whose name she couldn’t remember but which Wayne had been very excited to find in the sporting goods store, and the two remaining pistols, one of which had come from Wayne’s father’s safe, the other from an empty police cruiser—“You don’t have to cover me,” he’d said, “but pay attention,” and she had, sitting with her bag propped against the backpacks, the rifle resting against the dome of her belly, as Wayne retraced their route down the hill to the Bridge and then out onto it, to set up some trap that had occurred to him, maybe two if there were time, till he was lost to view, obscured by the lean of the hill opposite her.
Jackie—
—Jacqueline Marie DiSalvo: twenty years old; five foot six, tall as her (most likely dead) father; she didn’t know how many pounds anymore, since stepping on scales hadn’t been at the top of her list of priorities for some time, now; her hair dark brown, long enough not to look short; her eyes brown, as well; her features carefully proportioned, (once, her [dead] father had described them to her as prim, which she hadn’t been sure how to take); her skin less tanned than she would have expected, considering all the time they’d spent outdoors this past month: much of it at night, true, and there had been almost a solid week of rain in the middle of it, but still; wearing an extra-large men’s white cotton t-shirt, gray sweatpants, white cotton athletic socks, and knock-off Birkenstocks that were comfortable but growing too tight: again, shoe shopping not a priority when you were running (or waddling, in her case) for your life—five weeks ago, she had been thirty-five days less pregnant, six and a half instead of nearly eight months “along” (her [most likely dead] doctor’s favorite euphemism for pregnancy, as if carrying a child were an exotic vacation): a difference that meant, practically speaking, a smaller stomach, smaller breasts, smaller everything; smaller her, who didn’t tire quite so quickly; who didn’t feel so out of breath all the time; who didn’t sleep well but better than lately, when comfort had taken the last train out; who didn’t need to stop to pee all the time, while Wayne stood guard, his gun out, his eyes sweeping whatever landscape they were in for the inevitable (re)appearance of the Pack—
—sat waiting for Wayne—
—Wayne Anthony Miller: twenty years old, two days younger than Jackie, in fact: she born on the third of July, he the fifth; six foot three; maybe one hundred and seventy pounds, not yet grown out of adolescent gangliness (his [most likely dead] mother’s term, which he’d overheard her use at a New Year’s party and which he’d confessed to Jackie left him feeling betrayed in some fundamental way); his hands and feet large, hung from long, skinny arms and legs that attached to a long, skinny torso; his hair grown long, a light brown that had been blond until his teens, framing a broad, square face with a small nose, narrow eyes, and generous mouth; he was wearing the same pair of jeans that had seen him through the last month, and which were little worse for wear (what an ad campaign: “Levi’s: We’ll Get You Through the End of Civilization: Rated Number One in Post- Apocalyptic Scenarios”), with a red plaid shirt open over a gray t-shirt emblazoned with Batman’s black bat emblem, and Doc Marten’s—five weeks ago, he had been working at the Barnes and Noble just south of the Bridge on the other side of the river and spending more of each paycheck than he should have at the comic book store in the plaza, there; his Associates Degree in Liberal Arts from Dutchess County Community College completed the previous semester; his future, which revolved around dreams of writing one of the Batman titles, still, as he liked to put it, a work-in-progress (this back when the future had extended further forward than the next twelve hours, and been somewhat more complex, yet also somewhat simpler, than trying to locate food and defensible shelter).
